Online shopping has proliferated in the last decade and continues to grow. Websites allow consumers to make purchases without the assistance of a customer service representative, streamlining the shopping experience. In addition, the automated storage and retrieval of customer information, including billing information, makes online transactions faster and more secure. For certain products and services, however, consumers may still need or desire to speak to a customer service representative. These products and services may be more complex or customers may simply be more comfortable being services by a human being, and in some cases, customer service representatives can help businesses complete a sale faster and more accurately than a website alone. In general, customers who place an order through a customer service representative will often give their billing information directly to the customer service representative in order for the customer sales representative to process the order. If a business already has a customer's billing information stored in its computer system, the customer service representative will often have access to and can view the customer billing information in order to process a sales order. In many cases, however, companies do not have the billing information for customers when they are calling to place an order, and this information must be captured to complete the order.
In addition to online shopping, numerous calls are made to airline reservation desks, banks, insurance companies, healthcare companies, wireless companies, cable companies, medical professionals, and others where sensitive information either needs to be collected or confirmed by a staff member, company service representative, etc. The customer providing the information typically has no idea if the person at the other end of the phone is trustworthy and gathering this type of sensitive information is time consuming.